{"id":14785,"date":"2018-01-24T17:48:36","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T22:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/?p=14785"},"modified":"2018-01-25T11:12:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T16:12:34","slug":"food-for-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/2018\/01\/24\/food-for-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Food for Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Undergraduate Michaela Murray found her academic path on the road to sustainability<\/em><\/p>\n

91福利 ecology and environmental science major Michaela Murray had always been interested in doing student research but it wasn\u2019t until the end of her sophomore year that she acted on that desire.<\/p>\n

Hoping to begin a research project that summer, Murray\u2014who is an Honors College student with a minor in economics\u2014 learned through the grapevine about a pilot project the Honors College was starting with funding from the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Michaela Murray<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Farm to Institution Food Project<\/a> (F2I)\u00a0turned out to be right up Murray\u2019s alley, although she didn\u2019t know that at the time. It wasn\u2019t until another undergraduate research opportunity came up in the School of Economics\u2014the Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network<\/a> (SEANET)\u2014that everything fell into place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know this was a research interest of mine until I started doing both these projects dealing with sustainable food systems,\u201d Murray says. \u201cI\u2019ve grown to really care about this topic and I hope to stick with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the F2I project was the first time Murray became aware of the Mitchell Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked the Mitchell Center up on the web and thought, \u2018This is incredible, 91福利 has a whole center dedicated to sustainability solutions.\u2019 And I was sad that I hadn\u2019t been aware of it beforehand,\u201d Murray recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked the Mitchell Center up on the web and thought, \u2018This is incredible, 91福利 has a whole center dedicated to sustainability solutions.\u201d<\/em> \u2014Michaela Murray<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Murray arrived at 91福利 with a background in nutrition that became her first-year focus, but after just three weeks she realized that was not her cup of tea.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I switched to environmental science and immediately felt at home. I knew it was what I wanted to focus on because a lot of the coursework I was doing and people I was talking to centered around sustainability,\u201d Murray says.<\/p>\n

She adds, \u201cOnce you start learning about all the various aspects of sustainability it really starts clicking and you start to think, \u2018This is it, this makes sense, this is what we all need to be working towards.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

More specifically, she has found sustainable food issues to be particularly important and interesting to work on because, she asserts, \u201cfood is such a large part of every culture and making food systems sustainable is imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her F2I work led to her participating in the Mitchell Center Sustainability Lightning Talks<\/a> last November. Her talk, titled \u201cBringing Local Food To All: Challenges and Opportunities in Farm To Institution Initiatives,\u201d outlined the common problems and advantages of F2I practices that she identified from an extensive literature review of over 40 peer-reviewed journals and data sources.<\/p>\n

Farm to Institution<\/strong><\/p>\n

Across the nation, local food movements are gaining popularity as individuals and businesses alike begin to see the added value of sourcing and consuming locally produced food. One such mechanism for local food procurement are F2I initiatives, in which large-scale operations like K-12 schools, universities, hospitals, and corporations, work with small- to medium-sized farmers in their area to offer local products to their patrons.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, notes Murray, there are both challenges and opportunities associated with forming and maintaining these relationships. \u201cUnderstanding these is crucial for devising the most effective relationships between F2I stakeholders, and thus increasing the success of F2I programs in the nation\u2019s changing foodscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

After doing her literature review, Murray used an analytical process to identify certain patterns regarding the challenges and opportunities common to F2I efforts. She outlined these in her Lightning Talk.\"Basket<\/p>\n

The top challenges Murray identified were price and costs, which can limit participation in F2I. Institutions are often constrained by tight budgets and don\u2019t feel they can afford to purchase locally because farms usually charge higher prices than conventional distributors. That said, 91福利 recently announced<\/a> that it is now getting 23 percent of its food from local growers and producers and did so two years ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n

Availability and scale were other issues that came out of Murray\u2019s analysis. That is, Maine farmers are constrained by the growing season and \u201csometimes institutions feel like they won\u2019t be able to have a year-round supply and that\u2019s a disincentive to participate.\u201d An additional impediment is \u201cinfrastructure concerns, like not having the right transportation or storage facilities available,\u201d Murray says.<\/p>\n

Despite these challenges, there were also identifiable opportunities, with the utmost being relationships, according to Murray.<\/p>\n

Often the relationships between supply chain actors and F2I markets \u201care a little bit more close-knit than conventional food systems so there tends to be a higher sense of trust and communication in these sorts of markets, which can help increase the value of the food product and create a willingness to negotiate between the supply chain actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional opportunities Murray identified include the social benefits, improved nutrition that comes with having more universal access to healthier food that local farmers can provide, and environmental benefits like reduced food mileage and fuel usage.<\/p>\n

So how might all this be helpful to future F2I initiatives?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work has helped to identify some of the gaps in the literature, which has directly inspired some of the Maine stakeholder interviews that my research colleagues conducted recently,\u201d Murray says. \u201cWe hope that the results of the interviews and this work I did over the summer will influence future plans of action to help strengthen F2I research networks and facilitate stakeholder partnerships in Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you start learning about all the various aspects of sustainability it really starts clicking and you start to think, \u2018This is it, this makes sense, this is what we all need to be working towards.\u2019\u201d<\/em> \u2014Michaela Murray<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cMichaela has been an integral part of our grant team and her work was invaluable as we considered pilot interviews of F2I supply chain actors,\u201d says F2I team member Stephanie Welcomer<\/a>, Professor of Management, 91福利 School of Business.<\/p>\n

Murray, Welcomer adds, helped the team develop more useful interview questions and provided a systemic framework they could draw from. \u201cUsing her analysis we were able to ask questions that moved the conversation forward. I think the respondents were able to engage with us in a way that linked past practices and challenges to new ways of solving problems and stories of success,\u201d Welcomer says.<\/p>\n

Murray notes that the most recent work, including information gathered from the Maine stakeholder interviews recently conducted by Farm to Institution team co-leader Mark Haggerty<\/a>, Rezendes Preceptor for Civic Engagement in the Honors College, and Welcomer, will be part of upcoming Mitchell Center Sustainability Talk February 5 titled \u201cThe Puzzle of Making the Local Food Movement Sustainable: The Challenge of the Supply Side Chain<\/a>. Team members will also be outlining their recent work at the Maine Farm to Institution Summit 2018<\/a> in Belfast, Maine on February 9.<\/p>\n

\u2014David Sims<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Undergraduate Michaela Murray found her academic path on the road to sustainability 91福利 ecology and environmental science major Michaela Murray had always been interested in doing student research but it wasn\u2019t until the end of her sophomore year that she acted on that desire. Hoping to begin a research project that summer, Murray\u2014who is an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":963,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"3","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/author\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":609,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":609,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/963"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14785"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14820,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14785\/revisions\/14820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}